


wave a white flag

by Handful_of_Silence



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Brainwashing, Communication Failure, Drift Side Effects, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hermann Gottlieb vs The Anteverse, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Drift Drama, Spoilers for Pacific Rim: Uprising, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2019-04-23 05:16:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14325405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Handful_of_Silence/pseuds/Handful_of_Silence
Summary: “I remember that night,” Newt says. Quieter now.  “The party and the buzz and the feeling – man, the feeling we were goddamn rock stars. And we could have done anything, and yeah, I was thinking about all the glory and the fame and all the people whose faces I'd love to throw it in… but mostly, all I remember thinking was that I was going to get to do it all with you.”“Well, of course,” Hermann replies, and Newt snorts. “Who else would you have done it with?”Ten years on, Hermann and Newt navigate the end of the world.





	1. Chapter 1

The clock stops. The world booms loud and the war is over.

A party immediately sprouts up, an ill-organised mania of relief and elation that spreads its influence outwards from the LOCCENT to most of the Shatterdome. People are tired and euphoric and blistering with a misplaced energy, the fear and grief not quite shaken out of their stitches but with nowhere else to go. The black market must have done a roaring trade because from under beds and out of lockers and behind disused electrical panels comes bottles and cans and cartons and cigarettes, all offered towards the first party after the end of the world. All the bourbon alone seems to have come straight from Tendo's quarters. No-one is very surprised.

Newt is giddy, revelling in what must be some post-drift buzz, his stature swollen with glee and pride, flinging out his joyful interjections to everyone he meets. In the stark strip-lighting, his hands shudder with an adrenaline not yet bled out, and despite the bruising beginning to blotch patches of skin here and there and a faint limp in the same leg as his erstwhile drift partner, he seems unable to bring himself to stand still. Darting from person to person, scatter-gun speaking, congratulating, knocking elbows and splashing drinks and beaming manically. His fingers tap-tap-tapping on his glass, raising it sloppily, his smile like a live wire.

 _We're on a hell of a come-down, buddy!,_ he crows, moving, ever moving, and Hermann strides after him, moulded into his space wordlessly since the drift, that brief hug.

Newt flings his arms around strangers and enemies and J-techs and Rangers, and especially, especially Hermann, dancing around him like an orbiting satellite, chanting _we did it, dude, we did it, we're rock stars!_ And Newt can't seem to stop himself touching him, like it's the simplest thing to do, tugging at his coat, encircling his wrist with grimy fingers, nudging his shoulder. Hermann takes these intrusions with the same grace he takes everything, awkwardly, leaning into it like a rickety scarecrow, a rusty smile on his face with a sincerity he doesn't know how to enact. Each of these touches like an open wound, like holding his hand into a fire. He doesn't have the words to communicate this but he hopes they can both feel it. For the first time in a long time, he allows himself to think of the things he could have.

They drink too much. The music shocks through them with every beat, and Newt can't hear what Hermann is saying. He bounces and shakes and scream-shouts to the music and it's as though none of this is real. And he knows Hermann despises these sorts of gatherings, frowns at every rowdy shout and gleeful holler, but he doesn't leave, he doesn't leave and when Newt catches his eye, he forms that quick uncertain thing that promises to one day be a smile, and looks as though this the only place in the world he wants to be.

In the end, Newt tilts into Hermann's space, smirking in triumph as he presses a bottle of stolen wine into Hermann's hand, two already swinging from his own. And Newt pulls him away from the noise and the music and the people, and they walk until they find an empty corridor on the way to their own quarters, strewn with trodden streamers and a lone balloon. Newt half-falls to the floor, snorting at something, Hermann pulled down with him and cursing without teeth. The aftershocks of the music dull the sound around them, and they don't talk for a long moment. Feeling burdened with a sensation they can't communicate, sensing a weight to these hours they can't place. Newt massages his sore leg. Hermann thrums his fingers restlessly against his cane.

They sit shoulder to shoulder, passing the bottles between them, and toasting to the dead and victorious. Hermann's hair is crusted with sweat, upshot at strange angles. He keeps missing his mouth, swigging too forcefully with the tremor in his grasp, and he has to messily wipe the trickle of wine away with his sleeve. Newt is no better, crowned in grime and oil and dirt, his white shirt speckled with spilled drink, blood dug in under his fingernails. It seems there is too much to say. Newt's voice is strained and scratchy, and his sentence crackle, trail off, rally and stammer into one another in a strange burning need to say everything. His eyes too bright, blown by the hallway lights that flicker irregularly with the power fluctuations. Hermann keeps nudging his shoulder as he sways slightly, and sometimes Newton catches him looking at him straight on, staring the way he did hours before when Newt was lying on the floor of the lab, shivering and seizing with a jigged-up PONS on his head. And Newt had felt that violent terror in the drift, Hermann's terror, staggering through him like he'd been gutted, but the reverberations of that haven't quite died down for either of them. Newt can't meet his eyes, just for a moment, until whatever Hermann is thinking of passes into the haze of the night.

And it might be the drink or the drift, but Hermann's lines have softened out, his posture pliant as he slumps against the wall. He has always spoken like he's squaring up for a fight, but he keeps saying his name, _Newt,_ not _Dr Geiszler_ or _Newton,_ not like a curse or a scold but in a careful, thoughtful way that Newt doesn't know what to do with. They speak of things they haven't spoken of since those first letters, hopes and dreams and camaraderies. They flit in and out of German, and Newt's forgotten how long it's been since he's spoken it out loud. 

Each of them, at one point or another, considers their old unspoken hope of something other than this. Hermann thinks of stammering his admissions and leaning in with an absolute certainty not unlike falling, knowing Newt will taste of wine and blood. Newt thinks of taking them both back to his bunk, of this final wall between them crumbling down, wanting the heat and promise and push of something real that he knows will never leave him.

Yet the wine dampens their intentions, makes them sluggish, thick-headed. Newt yawns and his head dips briefly, and the wine in his glass sloshes, nearly tipped onto the gantry. Hermann blinks heavily and starts to breathe deeper, paling with tiredness. They fall asleep there, lulled up the thrum of the music, the tangle of the drift in their heads, propping each other up. And both of them think that this time, in the morning for sure, they'll say something.

This brief interlude, between the end of the apocalypse and something else entirely, burns briefly in the way beautiful things do. And the men who wake up the next day, groaning and moth-mouthed and aching, are not the same men who went into the drift together.  
  


* * *

 

Hermann thinks of excuses only later, because it's easier to bolster himself with rationales than succumb to guilt. Those weeks and months after the Breach closed, lessons in organized chaos, packing up, dismantling, shipping out; he says to himself, _there wasn't time, was there, we were both so busy, there wasn't a moment for us to..._

But with a gut-punch clarity he knows there was always time, that he could have made time, that if he'd looked outside himself for a single unselfish fucking second, he'd have _seen..._

* * *

 

An axis has shifted. Landscape altered in the aftermath of an earthquake. Newt's bruises heal and Hermann stops getting nosebleeds and the red-ring around their pupils slips back into a tired and blood-threaded white. Newt sleeps more in those first few weeks, drops off at his desk or at the lunch benches and Hermann dead-eyes  anyone who approaches them with the intent to disturb him before gently nudging him awake when they have to leave. They're aware of each other in a way they weren't before, and the knee-jerk reaction of searching each other out fades into something background and bearable after a while.

Newt brings him coffee and touches his shoulder like he's grounding them both, his ragamuffin hair almost like he's brushed it some days. Hermann sets medication reminders and colour codes who they are for in three distinct categories - me, him, and us. He forgets to brush his hair or iron his shirts, and he feels scruffy and distracted but happier than he's been in a long time.

Newt seems to find the most innocuous of reasons to huddle up into Hermann's space, and Hermann grumbles and Newt grins, and Hermann wonders when one of them will say something. A lot of the time, they don't need to say anything at all. An eyebrow raise is an inside joke, a tut or tsk is a fond admonishment, a pointed look and eyebrow roll is an underhanded joke that leaves them both smirking.

There is an equilibrium of silence for a long time.

They attend funerals and memorials and briefings and meetings and medical assessments and everything in his life is so _full,_ his head buzzing with thoughts that aren't always his, his thoughts and attention frenetic and unsteady, and that might be why it takes him so long to realise something isn't right.

Hermann attempts to doodle a crude representation of the only category five either of them will ever see with the sentimental intention for it to be a gift, trying to mimic the likeness of Newt's other tattoos. It's never quite perfect, and he keeps rubbing it out and starting again. Newt's stopped singing to himself when he works, and he sneaks off for hours to where Hermann can't find him. Hermann feels bereft and cut off and can't explain why. He goes to bed with a nausea in his stomach, and his nightmares, once flashes of movement and colour observed in the drift, gain substance, form.

Newt puts his hand on Hermann's arms sometimes, biting the inside of his lip and sucking in a breath like he wants to speak, and Hermann will hope with his stupid hopeless heart, and then Newt will blink rapidly and pull away like he's been scalded, making quick mumbling excuses to be anywhere else.

Newt yo-yos between slotting into his space, smiling, and vanishing, returning frenzied and sounding far-away.

Hermann comes to understand, slower than he should have, that they are irrevocably not the same as before.

 

* * *

 

 

Newton finds him one morning, surrounded by scattered papers all scribbled over with Newt's loopy and roaming handwriting, a mad catalogue of results and hypotheses and conjectures. Hermann hasn't changed since yesterday, his shoelaces loose and his shirt rumpled, jacket thrown over the back of one of their chairs. He's rolled up his sleeves to reveal pale arms, tempered by sinewy muscles, oddly delicate wrists.

"A bit too early for a  sexy show-and-tell," Newt grins as he strides over. "Don't think I've ever seen your vampire limbs before."

Hermann blinks, frowns, before looking down absently at his arms with something faintly bordering on surprise. He tugs his sleeves down sharply.

"Early for you," he replies, dropping the paper he's holding onto a slanted haphazard pile. "Thought you'd still be asleep."

"No rest for the wicked!" Newt chirps, and then changes tack. "Dude, seriously though, the floor is gross and uncomfortable and I can't think of how many things I've spilt on there in my time. What are you doing down there?"

Hermann is struggling to stand, and Newt surges over to help with a _woah there buddy_ , Hermann taking the leverage without complaint, nodding his gratitude. He doesn't answer the question initially, just lurches to his desk, his leg stiff and sore from the hard floor, muttering to himself as he pushes aside chalk and old coffee cups and scraps of documents not yet packed away before he grabs a piece of paper and turns it over. Newt peers over his shoulder with curiosity, adjusting his glasses.

"Some new Eureka moment you got there?"

Hermann pulls a pen from out of his trouser pockets and uses it to scrawl something on the blank side with his unforgivingly crabby handwriting. Nodding to himself, he thrusts it towards Newt, impatiently gesturing for him to take it.

"Indulge me, if you would," he says.

Newt quirks his head and rolls his eyes when he side-eyes what has been written.

"Look, I know you've been awake for like, hours, but it's the early morning for some of us and I _really_ need a coffee or three before I even start to deal..."

"Solve it," Hermann says. Leaning heavily on his cane.

"You've told me enough times, I'm not a maths guys ok, I'm more of a cool, punk, save-the-world-with-science sorta guy. Just explain it to me in small, simple words, I'll catch up."

"Newton, _solve it."_  Hermann insists.

Newt sighs and raises his eyebrows as if to say _sure, fine, whatever dude,_ taking the pen from Hermann. He half sits himself on Hermann's desk, squinting at the proof written there, and then he stares, frowns, and glances back over to Hermann. Standing impassive, white-knuckling his cane.

Newt flattens the paper onto the desk and begins writing. He hands it back after a minute or so.

"I've done it, alright. Look, tell me what this is all about." He touches Hermann's arm, scrunching his face and frowning. "You're worrying me a bit here, buddy."

Hermann glances down at what Newton's written. His reply is quiet.

"Congratulations, doctor. Perfectly accurate to the last digit."

Newt snorts, but there's an uncertainty to his smile. He's looking at Hermann warily, nervously, bouncing slightly on the soles of his feet. He doesn't understand but he's waiting for Hermann to explain it.

"What's your point, Hermann?"

"You said it yourself - you're not exactly proficient when it comes to maths."

"Look," Newt wipes at his eyes with the pads of his fingers. He's tired, jumpy. Hermann wonders if he's not sleeping. "I need some coffee or something, I dunno, maybe it was a fluke, or it was too easy. Maybe I struck lucky, hey it was bound to happen one day. I still don't see what the problem is."

"The problem is you shouldn't have been able to solve it!" Hermann says. Louder, more adamant. "The problem is all of this!"

He gestures at all the papers on the floor.

Newt throws up his hands.

"You've lost me."

"I have never made secret of my earlier dislike and distrust for your field of specialisation and its pertinence to our mission," Hermann states firmly. Before, he would have snapped his admission like he was spitting, sharp and clawed and waiting for the bite-back, but he hasn't spoken to Newt like that since they drifted. He hasn't spoken to anyone like that. "Yet I have read through every single one of your notes, experiment write-ups, marginalia..."

"I mean, I'm flattered, but I fail to see..."

"...and I understood everything."

Newt squints, giving a confused shake of his head like he's trying to clear it.

"That's..that's not all that strange, Hermann," he says slowly, patiently. "I mean, underneath it all, you're a smart man..."

Hermann huffs, clenching his fists. "I would have had sufficient, if cursory knowledge. Not this... unearned proficiency. Without wanting to sound like I'm singing my own praises, I could dismantle that brain over there..." Hermann throws his hand out to the glass tank in the corner, and Newt's expression shutters, frowning. "...with as much technical ability and competency as you yourself."

Newt pauses. Running his hand through his hair, scratching at his scalp before shrugging.

"So, you think it's the drift?"

Hermann nods jerkily. "That's exactly what I'm thinking."

Newt crosses his arms, showing off the faces of the dead and defeated on his forearms. He chews his lower lip while he thinks.

"Ghost-drifting is a well-documented phenomenon. This... well, it's unusual granted, but it doesn't seem like a bad thing to me in the grand scheme of things. There's been no nasty health side effects, right? Hell, maybe we could collaborate on a paper together!"

Newt grin is so guileless, so eager to find the silver lining that Hermann is tempted to keep quiet. Newt's not stupid, knows more about drift side-effects than Hermann, he must have realised. So if he's not worried, why can't he back down, why does he feel so unbalanced in the face of Newt's uncomprehending efforts to reassure him.

"Ghost-drifting is a rare occurrence," he says dully. "Usually compromised of phantom sensations, feelings, emotions, memory fragments. It lasts a few hours, at maximum a day or two. This is _three months_."

"So I've gained some skill with numbers and you know how to cut up a kaiju!" Newt shoots back, frustrated. "I don't see what the big deal is!"

Hermann slams his stick angrily. "Look at my desk! What do you see?"

Newt glances over at the scatter of papers, old take-out boxes, pens, chalk and paperclips, a couple of coffee cups set down days before, the contents long cold. He throws up his hands.

"Regular desk stuff! We've been busy, a little bit of untidiness is nothing to be ashamed of. Look at it as you finally growing into a real boy after all this..."

"Newt," Hermann interrupts quietly. "Tell me to drop this, and I will. Tell me I'm being foolish, or jumping to conclusions, and I'll believe you. But the evidence stands before me. I've never allowed myself the lack of discipline to be untidy, and yet my desk is messy. You on the other hand, you've not played any of your dreadful music once. Your desk is almost ordered! And there's... there's other things as well." He stops and tries to organise the quick-fire thoughts in his head into usable words. It never used to be this difficult. A lot of things didn't use to be.

"I can't, I can't draw any more..." He continues, and his voice drops low, tired. "I try to sketch and it's like a child is holding the pencil. And then...I see you sometimes, Newton, when you think I'm not looking, rubbing your leg. _My leg,_ Newt, my _pain._ And so, I have to ask myself, what else have I foisted upon you? We're not the same Newt... we've...the drift has changed us somehow. So tell me you've noticed _nothing_ , tell me. Because I know that something isn't _right,_ there's something we're missing."

"Missing what?" Newt throws his hands out, but his leg is fidgeting restless, and he won't keep Hermann's gaze. "I mean, come on Hermann, this is beginning to sound a bit, well, coming from me this is a bit..."

"Where do you go at night?" Hermann interrupts shortly. He's not sure why he asked, but now he's said it, he desperately needs to know.

Newt stills suddenly, whatever he was going to say derailed. There's a guilt somewhere there, Hermann's sure of it, rising like tears in his eyes, before it gets shuts down behind a flustered anger.

"What, so now you're following me?! The hell, Hermann!"

"I don't have to be!" Hermann snarls, and there is a surge of reality, of the way things were before, the pent-up anger and frustration and strain of a war-zone, and it leaves him reeling and dizzy. "I have...that is to say...I have such _nightmares,_ Newton..." He stares off at the bomb-site of the desk behind Newton. "Of what we saw...there, together in the drift...of grasping,  wretched things, and they are getting so close. A-a-nd I _know,_ I know, you don't have to tell me I'm being ridiculous. But I knock on your door, and try and find you, to make sense of all this, to try and understand, and you're never there. You're not a heavy sleeper, so tell me, where do you go at night?"

Newt looks at him, and his expression is devastated.

"Hermann. Buddy." Newt is moving then, crowding into his space, voice soft and settled in a way it wasn't before. He wraps his arms around Hermann and Hermann lets himself be pulled in, held tightly. His reflex reaction of stiffening uncomfortably appears a distant memory. He tells himself that Newt is whole and healthy and safe before him, that those dreams are the shadows of his fears, that they aren't _real._

"Hermann, I believe you, of course I do," Newt says, rubbing a hand on Hermann's back. The sound of his voice rumbles through his chest. "If you think there's something, then I believe you. So why don't we do this together, ok? Conduct a few experiments, check we haven't lost anything important. Keep an eye on it. You don't need to do this alone, though, you understand. Not anymore."

Newt sounds sincere and his voice goes reedy in the way it does when he's trying to hold back tears. Hermann nods dumbly, his throat dry, coughs out an affirmation and still Newt is speaking or maybe he isn't: _I'm sorry I've been distant, I'm sorry you needed me and I wasn't there._

Hermann feels safe and held, and he never needed that before the drift.

Newton will help, he thinks. His thoughts calm for the first time in weeks. We'll solve this together.

He tries not to think of how Newt avoided the question. He can only deal with one catastrophe at a time.  
  


* * *

 

Those promises fizzle out into excuses and apologies and delays over months, and it occurs to Hermann that Newton is slowly drifting away from him. Newt's not the same man Hermann knew, and Hermann wonders why that makes him so disappointed. Because Newt's allowed to change isn't he, he's allowed to shrug off the snake-skin of his dizzying leaps of logic, his scatter-brained thoughts vocalised an octave too high, his overt emotionality. He's emerged a slower man, more intense, focused, and he continues to go off on his own for prolonged periods of time. When he comes back he won't meet Hermann in the eyes. He doesn't touch Hermann as much after these absences, keeps a respectful distance, his hands against his sides. These changes aren't obvious to an outsider, but Hermann's been inside Newt's head. He can't help but notice.

And Hermann wonders if - as Hermann has adopted Newton's messiness and emotionality and his adept ability in biology - if this is what he has given Newton. These sudden drops into a surly silence that on occasion tip into arrogance when they're disagreeing about something. If he is seeing the worse examples of himself reflected back at him, poisoning Newt's character.

If this is his doing.  
  


* * *

 

Their victory over the Kaiju and the validation of the Jaeger programme brings everything Newt had always optimistically sworn it would. Fame, interest, promises. And whenever Newt talks over coffee or drinks, riding the high of a good day and babbling about the future while he's working he always takes the two of them as a package deal. _We could go to TU Berlin, what do you think Hermann? The old alma mater. Or we could take some leave, go see the folks, Uncle Gunther has been dying to see us!_ And it never occurs for Hermann to say that one of them went to that university, only one of them has an Uncle Gunther, because it's a good day, and Newt's bumping up against his shoulder, knocking their knees together, and it honestly never crosses his mind to delineate much of a difference between them anymore.

It's been months, and Hermann always knew that Newt wanted more than the PPDC, but he'd assumed...

He'd assumed they'd be doing it together.

"When were you going to tell me?" he asks as he strides into the lab. He's trying to pretend he hasn't near-ran all the way from the Conn where Tendo dropped the news, trying to make it seem like his voice isn't trembling.

"I was going to," Newt says, his back to him, tying the final knots into the fabric cover of the kaiju brain tank. His voice says _lie._ It must be one of those days, the off days because Newt is standing far too still, a tension in his shoulders, and he won't turn around and look at Hermann. "You know how these things are, they're all last minute and they don't call you back for ages and you think they've forgotten you, and then it's all ooh when can you start."

Hermann feels unmoored, adrift. He swallows hard.

"When are you leaving?"

"Tonight, I'm afraid buddy." Newt turns around and finally meets his gaze. It's neutral, flat, and Hermann is pathetically grateful he's not mentioning how much of a mess he must look. "Flight out is at seven."

Hermann's throat catches despite itself. That's barely six hours, it's so soon, he hasn't had the chance to...

Newt moves forward, and it's like a switch is flipped. He seems wired with something trapped under his skin, rocking on the balls of his feet.

"Come _with_ me," he urges, and his expression is too sharp, oversaturated with whatever he isn't saying. "Shao Industries...they'd kill to have you on the team, any research facility in the world would, hell, you're the man that coded the first Jaegers! And well, I'm pretty fantastic myself." His hand grabs at Hermann's forearm. "I _want_ you there with me, man! I'm serious, nothing has to change!"

"Newton, I belong _here._ Not some comfortable corporate set-up. There's still so much we don't understand about the Kaiju, the Precursors, and we need to be ready for when..."

"When they come back?" Newt's earnestness has been replaced by a dismissive annoyance. "Seriously dude, you sound like one of those doomsday prophets. Don't you get it? The war is _over,_ we can do whatever we want, we can live our lives now, and we can do it _together."_

He stands there, beseeching, his sleeves pulled down to his wrists and his shirt ironed, and how can he not know that the war isn't over, not for Hermann, not for either of them.

"I can't leave," Hermann says softly. Sadly. "Not until I'm sure about this. There's too much at stake here."

Hermann can't tell whether Newt's expression is disappointment or relief. It's hard to tell anything about him these days.

Newt begins to pull away, but Hermann catches his wrist, before sliding down to hold him by the hand. Newt tenses, and Hermann can't go back now.

"Stay with me here," he says intently. "Not forever, just for a bit longer, until we've got things sorted. I don't want to do this without you. Stay with me."

He feels his face heating up rapidly as Newt stands and says nothing for an uncomfortably long time. He thought, he had thought Newt would know what he meant, would understand, would feel the same...

Newt pulls his hand away sharply, and Hermann has never felt more of a fool.

"Maybe this move is the best for both of us," Newton says finally. The chasm between them yawns, insurmountable. "I...I've got to finish all this packing Hermann...I..."

Hermann knows what a dismissal sounds like to recognise one now.

"Of course," he says quickly, standing painfully straight. "May I help or give you a hand with some of the heavier...?"

"No - no, Hermann, you should just...just go..."

"Right."

"I'll find you later, before I leave," Newton offers after a pause.

Hermann nods sharply. "Till then. I will see you later, Newton."

He walks out of the lab wondering how the hell he managed to fuck this up so badly, and a mouthful of ash for everything unsaid.

Newton doesn't find him to say goodbye, and those are the last words they say to each other face-to-face for ten years.

Maybe if I'd said yes, Hermann thinks. Maybe, maybe, maybe...  
  


* * *

 

This brave new world is everything and nothing that he hoped for.

He thrives in this ground, flourishes in the fields of sciences that have opened up to him. He's looser and he works better with others, and he thinks _maybe I'm happy like this, maybe this is acceptable._

With Newt at Shao Industries, they continue to exchange emails, and hope lives on stubbornly in his throat, his hands, his chest. Even though these letters are sterile, friendly but brisk, lacking the detailed tangents that characterised their youthful correspondence. There's so much he's not allowed to talk about, very 'hush-hush', and Hermann tries not to feel pushed away, left out.

 _I hope you are well, Newton,_ his letters always start. He fills them with pleasantries, questions, updates on the state of the PPDC. He tells him when Tendo and Alison move on, when Mako is promoted, when Hansen retires and Becket leaves. He doesn't say he misses him.

Sometimes he writes separate letters on paper, composing them on scraps and missives he finds on his desk, and here he scrawls everything he doesn't say, his hopes and his fears and his regrets, binning them hastily after his flight of foolishness has passed.

Newt mentions an Alice and the rigour and corporate in-fighting of Shao Industries, and Hermann wonders if it is simply distance that is twisting Newton into a man he barely knows. Becoming a raged memory, tainted by absence and made raw by time.

The years drag on. Hermann's nightmares come regularly now.

Mostly, they are horror-filled. He dreams of the Breach, the dark wash of the Anteverse, a clicking sound moving closer before they find him. Then there is confusion and a feeling of being ripped open, and he feels flayed alive, lonely, worthless, screaming and with a surge of agony he'll wake panting with a sensation like slithering behind his eyes, sweating and scrabbling for the light.

Sometimes he dreams, not of monsters, but of Newt. A different Newt, a Newt that stayed. This unreal Newt curls against Hermann like a comma as they sit cramped in Hermann's old Hong Kong quarters, pushed comfortably together by the lack of space and Newt is gesturing and articulating with his hands as he enthuses about some film he's seen, making a pillow out of Hermann's shoulder. Hermann's pretending to be reading, but he's not, not really. There is a lightness like a balloon in his chest. Once, Hermann dreams of that party that evening after the end of the world, except Newt has wrapped his arms around him and they're rocking together in time with the music and each other.

And Hermann is so convinced by these fictions, so caught up by the glamour, of the sensation of feeling _whole_ that he forgets every time that the dream will eventually tip into nightmare. That Newt will suddenly look at him with flat, shark-like eyes and his smile will be unrecognisable.

"Pathetic," he'll sneer, and then Hermann will feel cold fingers constricting around his throat, and he'll scrabble to push the hand away, try and beg Newt to stop this, whatever it is, that this is _wrong,_ that he's a good man. But he's got no air to speak, his body trapped under him and his leg crushed beneath an uncomfortable weight, and he's _trying,_ he's _trying,_ but this isn't Newt anyway, pushing him down, holding him down forcefully as he chokes, this knife-smile without a soul.

And when he wakes up from these dreams, Hermann doesn't even attempt to hold back his tears, his stomach twisted in terror, his heart slamming too fast, unable to steady his breathing. The horrors already fading into a dull fear that will be washed into obscurity by morning.

Unable to go back to sleep, he composes letters that he'll never send.

_Newt, I am frightened. Newt, I see such terrors, and I am scared, and I am not brave enough to face them. I am struggling. Newt, I do not know what sort of man I am anymore, but he's not the man who drifted with you._

_I miss you,_ every letter shouts, _I miss you, I miss you, I miss you._

 

* * *

 

 

The thing no-one wants to admit about time is how easily it passes.

Newt doesn't write many emails these days.

Hermann stops waiting for his replies.

Ten years tick by.  
  


* * *

 

It has been ten years, and they've been counting down to this moment. There is Shao Industries and his mission and the drones, and Hermann's blood is roaring in his ears and he meets Newt's eyes and the unison of motion, the clarity of purpose, it's like a homecoming, it's like drifting again, it's perfect.

Until it's not, and Hermann listens with a flowering horror at what he's hearing.

There's a dull grinding somewhere inside him, and he suddenly feels very tired. He's been tired for a long time, since the clock stopped ten years ago, since ten years before that, since those first letters and first fights and first disappointments. Life is exhausting him, and he dreams and dies and dreams and dies again, and the refuge he thought he'd find is standing before him in an unrecognisable suit, a cruelty on his face, a sharpness behind his eyes that doesn't belong there.

Newt wouldn't have known how to reprogram those drones. Not without taking Hermann's knowledge, stuffed into his brain after the drift, warping it, ruining it, something else's voice whispering in his ear.

_Maybe I hate you all for treating me like an insignificant joke of a man, maybe that's why he did it Hermann._

Hermann stares horrified, numb, and a man he doesn't know smiles back.

It's almost a relief when he feels those hands around his neck. This feeling is familiar at least.  
  



	2. Chapter 2

The world doesn’t end again, except it does, it _has_ , and the thing coiled and parasitic in the shambling body of his friend has a grin like an axe blow. Sitting in that chair, patient, waiting. The Newt he knew was bombastic and hectic and loud, a study in perpetual motion. That Newt was ten years younger, and Hermann doesn’t know long it’s been since he wasn’t himself. He keeps reviewing the things he should have done, the things he should have noticed, and the list of his mistakes leaves him staggering.

With the pressing concern of the Precursor’s next move, Hermann has to fight to keep Newton from being shipped off to some other Shatterdome. They won’t know Newton, he rationalises. They won’t try and save him, won’t try and fix what’s been done to him, they’ll just do god knows what in the aim of learning the Precursor’s plan. Hermann doesn’t trust anyone else with something this important.

He believes unwaveringly that Newton is in there because that is his only option. To commit wholeheartedly to a faith that he can be saved, that knowledge can be gleaned about the Precursors without destroying an innocent man in the process. He argues this in meeting after meeting with soldiers and marshals and the so-called experts in their fields, unyielding, bullish with desperation, feverish with the desire to prove them all wrong. He’s curt, brisk, ruthless in his speech, colour rising high in his cheeks as his volume grows. Unwilling to suffer fools, uncompromising in his conclusions, standing like he’s ready for the first punch to be thrown. He’s almost himself again, the man he was before the drift, and he doesn’t know how he feels about that.

Newt can survive this, he tells himself. He keeps the photograph of them both in his pocket at all times, and in moments of solitude, of wavering resolve, he presses his hand to it to reassure himself. Newt was always the stronger of the two of them.

But they don’t have forever, and time is running out if it hasn’t already. Newt doesn’t have time for them to be arguing about this.

“He’s my responsibility,” he insists in the face of Pentecost and Lambert, the latest in a long line of people questioning his justifications. “He stays here, and that’s the end of it. This is not a subject for debate.”

They voice their doubts once.

Lambert broaches it: “Gottlieb, the chances of him being in there…”

It’s the wrong thing to say.

“I will not be lectured on scientific probability by the likes of you,” he snaps. “I know the risks, what’s at stake, so do not presume to tell me what can and what cannot be done. We have lost so many people in this war. Good people, people who tried and failed, and right at this moment there is a _good_ man behind that glass, Ranger. The man, who you’ll remember if you bothered to read your history books, risked his life to close the Breach, who sacrificed everything in the process. He deserves your bloody respect, and you _dismiss_ him, as if there is nothing to be done. If there is the slightest chance that one, just _one_ person can be salvaged from this mess…”

“But what if there isn’t?” Lambert insists angrily, his jaw set. He’s bristling, hands fisting by his sides. “What if he’s been dead and gone for years now, and there’s that _thing_ in there wearing his skin and his voice, if there’s nothing left of him to fight them, what use is my _respect_ then?”

“You dare to have the bloody nerve…!”

“Gottlieb…” Pentecost interjects loudly, an edge to his voice like his father. “Look, we know what Geiszler did for us, OK? What debt we owe him. No-one has forgotten that. But you have to know, the higher ups, they’ve got pretty serious doubts about keeping him here instead of a more suited Shatterdome….”

“And what,” Hermann bites out, “are these doubts of theirs?”

Pentecost hasn’t formed the habit of sugar-coating unwelcome news that some of his peers have. Hermann is distantly grateful for his brusque honesty.

“At best, that given your history with Geiszler, you lack the necessary impartiality to do what might need to be done. At worst…” Pentecost stops and Lambert interrupts.

“It’s well documented that Geiszler was not the only one who drifted with a Kaiju, Doctor. We didn’t know who it affected him, we don’t know how it’s affected you, and as such, your loyalty is potentially compromised.”

Hermann understands why they’re saying all this. Rationally he knows they can’t afford to be emotional about this. The assault left many of their Shatterdomes weakened, their Jaegers poorly manned.

He’s isn’t feeling very rational these days. He’s got a head full of rocks and it’s almost drowning him.

“We’ll get something very clear, gentlemen,” he says, his voice quiet, whited out with fury. He’s straightened his posture to a military tightness. “I have given _everything_ to this organisation, this war. I have lost friends, family… the people I love, and you dare imply treachery. My loyalty is unquestionable. And as for my _impartiality_ ,” he sneers the word. “If there is any chance on this earth I can save Newton I will. And if I can’t… then I will do what is necessary. What my _loyalty_ demands of me. Does that sound acceptable to you?”

Jake Pentecost pauses before he nods and looks at Hermann directly in the eye. He looks so much like his father. It only reminds Hermann of the things he’s lost.

“Yeah,” Pentecost replies. “I think we’ve got an understanding alright.”

 

* * *

 

Three hyped-up J-Techs try to break into the detention facility about four weeks after the attack on Tokyo. They’re drunk and stupid, and they’re riled up thinking about revenge, grieving in their own way.They can’t hurt the Precursors, so their human emissary is their next best option.

They don’t get passed the door.

By the time security arrive to break it up, Hermann’s face is puffy with bruising, and he’s sucking in air through his teeth because he can’t through his nose. He’s bit someone, and his teeth are as bloody as his knuckles. He’s so furious he’s almost gagging on the sensation. Newt can’t fight his own battles, so Hermann will fight them for him, wolf-teeth bared, and a rage rotted into his marrow. There are two technicians on the ground, and Hermann can’t remember putting them there, but his cane is broken with the force of his blows, and he’s snarling and shouting, and this feels like he’s winning however savage, using the end he’s still holding to whack the final man hard across the chest, across the head.

There’s a tight feeling in his chest, and if security hadn’t arrived, he wouldn’t have stopped. He knows that should frighten him.

No-one else tries anything after that. 

 

* * *

 

Mako comes to visit him in the lab one day and stands, and the doorjamb gives a creaking wince as she leans her shoulder against it. She knocks in that muted tap-tap like she did when she was small, and Hermann smiles like an indulgent uncle and wordlessly nods, hums a distracted greeting, gestures her to come in without looking up.

The lab is empty, even though it’s not late in the day. He’s difficult to work with these days. He’s finding it nearly impossible, remembering to be kind.

“It’s been a long week,” Mako says, apropos of nothing.

“Indeed,” Hermann replies, peering down the lens of a microscope, adjusting the lens and making irritable sounds when it goes out of focus. He knows she’s looking directly at him, studying him carefully, and he doesn’t want to know what she sees. He’s jittery under the skin, caught in amber. He’s run more tests and they’ve all come back badly. He feels like he’s running red light after red light and wondering when he’ll crash.

“He’s been asking after you.”

“You mean that thing wearing Newton’s face as a suit?” Hermann snorts humourlessly, and grabbing his cane – newer now and not quite worn in – strides over to another section of his lab to adapt his data on the screen. He squints through his glasses, stops to rub them clean on the bottom of his shirt before he continues.

Mako tips her head in what is a quiet acknowledgement.

“Will you go and see him?”

“No.”

“Why?” she asks.

Hermann doesn’t reply for a moment. He worries his lower lip with his teeth, dragging at the chapped skin there, stares belligerently at the screen, hoping to be ignored, accepting it won’t work.

“I can’t,” he murmurs. “He’s in there, Mako. I know he is, and I’m not… I’m not strong enough to watch some parasite make a mockery of him.”

“And what if he’s not in there?” she says pointedly, and Hermann wants to turn around and meet her gaze, wants to be strong enough for that at least.

“You should go,” he says, pained. “This isn’t your war anymore. You’re dead. You can’t help either of us.”

He risks a darting glance upwards, and like he had expected, she is gone. And he is alone.

 

* * *

 

 

He doesn’t know how long he does this.

He’s set up a cot in the corner of the lab, and he sleeps fitfully if he sleeps at all. He occurs to him that he might be grieving; Mako, Newt, everything he’s lost to these monsters and everything they’re still taking. There’s a guilt coiled like a stomach cramp inside him.

He analyses sample after sample of blood, tissue, muscle and bone, reads daily reports on the prisoner’s condition compiled by inferior observers, conducts mathematical studies and computer predictions based on algorithms; he scrawls his chalkboards with equations, bounding from one Kaiju sample to another, vitreous membranes and sample plates and test tubes all over his desk. He listens to classical music played at a volume just below painful while he’s peering over his glasses at readouts. The eclectic oddities of sound that are whatever Newt used to listen to come on sometimes and he can’t bring himself to change the track.

Hermann catches himself snarking a riposte to a comment that no-one has spoken or complaining about the mess that he himself has made.

He considers taking medication. He cycles up giddy, manic and optimistic, staying up for days at a time, before crumbling into a low black mood that will last even longer, unsociable and exhausted, waspish and irked by everything. His brain can’t decide which Hermann he is any more, the one who went into the drift or the imperfect replica that came out.

The bad dreams come without fail and he feels like every night is another war he is losing. And if Mako was here, she could take him to one side, lure him into the light with a gentle urging. She would know what to say, how to say it. But there’s only strangers left, strangers and the ghosts of those that came before, and Hermann owes allegiance to none of them.

He stiffly reports his findings at every board meeting they drag him out to, shoulders squared, fingers crooked into fists around the handle of his cane, one wrong word away from fighting. Back at the lab, he’s dismissive to everything but the work. And in the corner of the room, floating serenely, dormant, that hateful monstrosity that took Newton’s curiosity and marvelling and desire for discovery and distorted it into something hideous that sits in that chair and smirks like it’s holding a knife.

 

* * *

 

After months, a solution occurs to him.

He throws himself into simulation models and brainwave analysis, scrawling digit after digit across the diorama of blackboards he’s had set up, all his data matching after months of failure. Something settles under his ribcage, expanding with every breath, and as he looks over chart after chart, he thinks it might be something like hope.

“I’ve had an idea,” he states, marching up to Rangers Pentecost and Lambert one morning in the cafeteria as they’re sat eating breakfast. Hermann hasn’t slept, and he wonders if it shows. Jake gives him a hard, critical look, before he throws out a hand and motions him to join them.

“Hit me,” he says.

Hermann explains in the simplest terms about how the mechanics of drifting works. Nate looks bored, as though he knows all this, wants Hermann to skip to the point, but he listens as he works through a mug of black coffee. Jake’s still got two slices of toast on his plate, but he lets them go cold before him as he listens to Hermann’s proposal about how he aims to block the influence of the Precursors inside Newt’s brain to allow the native personality to reassert itself. He shows them simulations, charts of how the influence can be impeded, tumbling through a layman’s description of brainwaves and neural loads and how he intends to temporarily stunt the Precursors’ signature. If Newt’s in there, that’s how they’ll get to him.

What he was hoping would be a brief discussion encompasses several hours, a good degree of back-and-forth disagreements that verge into what could politely be termed shouting, and numerous variations on ‘the higher-ups won’t like this’. Newt is a valuable asset in terms of the information he potentially has, and the experiment is potentially endangering. But Hermann is strung out, aggressive, tired. Despite minor surgery on the insistence of Pentecost, his nose doesn’t look as entirely straight as before. His leg hurts with an ache like frostbite. He hasn’t had a full conversation in a long time that isn’t snappish and brisk. He’s out of ideas, and he hasn’t come this far to lose to petty-minded bureaucracy. 

It takes just over a week before Hermann is content to give the green light to the attempt, and another three agonisingly long days before the council and a plethora of scientists weigh in with their opinions and grant him permission. Yet when the time comes, Hermann lingers outside the detention room, something like nervousness or fear ravelled up in his chest. He hasn’t seen Newton since they brought him in, has made that decision deliberately for both their sakes.

There’s a hand on his shoulder.

“Let’s see if we can’t get your boy back, yeah?” Pentecost says quietly, and Hermann nods, breathes in, and opens the door.

Some faceless technicians have already set everything up in readiness for his arrival, the PONS headset strapped snugly onto to Newton’s head.

The thing focuses on him immediately, and a lazy smile curls on its face.

“Hey! I knew you’d come see me eventually, buddy!” it says with Newt’s voice. His inflections, his tone. He even looks pleased to see him, bright eyes unencumbered by the mucky lens of his glasses. “Gotta say though man, I’m kind of offended it’s taken you so long. I thought we were meant to be friends.”

“Newton is my friend.” Hermann says. He forces himself not to look away. It is looking at him like it wants to drag a scalpel down his chest to see what’s inside. “I don’t know about you.”

The smile is dropped quickly, slackening into something flat, something unpractised, unnatural in the execution of the motion. Unblinking eyes stare out, watching him hawk-like.

“We’ve missed you,” the thing says, and there’s that bass growl that gives them away for what they are. “He thought you’d forgotten about him. Alone in the dark. What’s changed? Why have you come?”

Hermann swallows and gestures to the people on the other side of the glass to lock the door behind him. It’s a precautionary measure, one that was well-argued in the initial briefing, but he still grits his teeth when he hears the deadbolt slam.

“I would never forget him,” he says, ignoring their questions. He grips hold of the remote he is carrying, one red button powered up to initiate the jerry-rigged PONS on Newt’s head. He casts his eye on the various machines around them, monitoring vital signs, all steady and undisturbed.

“He doesn’t know that. He needed you, Hermann Gottlieb, and you abandoned him. Some friend you were.”

He is trying to ignore the words, and he is failing. They’re digging in, taking root, spreading seeds. The creature knows it.

“Tell me, why are you here?” it asks again.

He breathes heavily as he turns up the dial, feeling the resistance as it clicks through the settings. He’s repurposed older equipment, distrustful of the newer remotes, and so it looks like he’s made it from scrap. He listens for the whine of the PONS as it warms up, settles into its circuits.

“I’m here now, Newt,” he says quietly, and he _hopes_ , he’s hoping so hard it’s indistinguishable from prayer, and he pushes the button on the box he’s carrying.

The effect is immediate.

The thing _screams_. Its back arching, wrists straining at their bands, and the sound tails off into a shriek that’s choked down into a low gargle as the dampening effects take hold. Newt’s body thrashes, spasming, a jerky puppetry, and its raging even as the whole chair shakes and clatters.

“You dare… you pathetic little worm….,” it snarls, saliva frothing in its mouth, staring with such undisguised hatred, and Hermann turns the dial up further. Watching Newt – even if it’s not Newt, if it hasn’t been for long time – scream and choke and keen with pain, blood dripping from his noses, eyes rolling to the back of his head, is almost impossible to bear. He gags down a cry, and forces himself not to look away.

And then it gets worse.

It takes a long, rending moment for Hermann to realise that the keening isn’t just coming from Newton, but from the sturdy beaten-up heart monitor to the left of the chair. The signs spiking rapidly with an incessant series of beeps, rapidly dropping. Newton’s head lolls, and his breath is coming out in a panting wheeze, too fast, laboured like something is pressing on his chest.

Something’s gone wrong.

“Abort! Re-establish the connection!” he hears someone outside shout, but he’s not thinking, he’s barely breathing, just moving to unbuckle Newt’s restraints, needing to get him flat, into the recovery position or _something_.

The man slithers onto the floor once the restraints have been unclasped, a dead weight, his body still faintly twitching and arching. There’s blood dripping onto his collar, his shirt. Herman catches him with a gentleness he forgot he had, holds him against his chest, feeling the shaking rock through his own body, pleading for this to work.

“We’ve blocked their connection, Newton,” he urges. “You need to fight through this. Come on, you insufferable idiot, don’t you _dare_ give up now.”

“Press that button!” The shouting interrupts again. “Re-establish the connection, goddamn it!”

The Precursors have gone though. He knows this as Newton’s eyes dart this way and that, before settling dead on him, blinking and terrified, wheezing and blood trailing from his nostrils.

“I’ve got you, Newt,” he murmurs, trying to smile reassuringly. His voice catches, breaks. “I’ve got you, come on, you can do this.”

Newt should have taken control by now. With the malignant influence blocked, he should be able to re-establish his hold.

But the heart monitor is slowing further, dipping and stuttering. Newt won’t break his gaze, sucking in air painfully loudly, making sharp pained noises at the back of his throat. It occurs to Hermann with a dread horror that Newt is dying in his arms with every passing moment.

He moves to press the button – this is a failure, he’ll have to try something else, there must have been something else that he hasn’t seen, that he should have seen – when an arm flails out weakly, pushing his hand back.

“Don’t…” a grating, broken voice rasps. His hand is pushed away again, more forcefully, when Hermann tries to repeat the motion. “Don’t… Hermann…”

Newt’s mouth is flecked with blood and spit, and Hermann thinks he must have bitten his tongue during the seizure. There’s a wildness in his eyes, only half focused without his glasses, but it’s him, unmistakably him, and still he won’t blink, staring up like Hermann’s the only thing he wants to see.

“Newton, you foolish man, you will _die_ if I don’t re-connect…”

“Let me…” Newt’s slurring his words, his mouth barely able to shape the sounds, but he’s grabbed on to Hermann’s hand, gripping him insistently. His eyes watering, a slick of tears beginning to trail down his face. “For me… please Hermann.” He’s forcing the words out with difficulty through his teeth, and still he won’t look away. “I don’t want… I can’t… Let this end, Hermann, god, please…”

Newt’s weight is heavy in his arms. His hair is ruffled into untidiness like it used to be. His jaw set like he wants to win an argument. His shirt crumpled and ill-suiting, and his eyes half pleading and half readying for a scrap even if he’s shaking like a tree in a storm and grasping at Hermann’s arm like he’s pulling himself up onto dry land. It’s the most like himself he’s been in ten years.

“OK,” Hermann finds himself nodding. He rubs his thumb against the soft skin of Newton’s hand, slotting their fingers together. “OK, Newt. It’s OK. I’m here. You won’t be alone.”

Newt gives a watery quirk of his lips and it might be a smile. There’s relief behind his eyes as his eyelids flutter and the heart monitor begins to slow.

Then suddenly, violently, something is grabbed out of his hands, and Hermann is pushed backward so hard he falls into sitting, his hand ripped from its grasp. He’s aware he’s shouting, trying to force his bloody leg to co-operate as Newt is hauled up unceremoniously into his chair by medics and technicians, strapped back in efficiently, making a garbled noise of protest, of pleading, a weak litany of _no-no-no-no_ , and one of the technicians has the remote….and then there is a CLICK and then Newton is gone.

Hermann finally manages to stand up. His legs graceless, trembling. He listens to the heart monitor easily regulate itself back normal as though nothing had happened, and he can’t turn away, hoping for a glimpse that Newt’s fought through this, that he hasn’t been thrown back into the dark.

Newton raises his head, his face smeared with blood and tears, and stares at him triumphantly. Viciously.

“Poor, poor Herman,” the thing laughs, almost spitting. It’s panting, almost doubled over as much as it can, but it’s won and it knows it. “There is no him without us any more, don’t you understand, you pathetic creature. He is _ours_.”

Someone is pulling him out of the room, almost dragging, and he doesn’t even fight it. He can’t take his eyes off Newton until the door is closed behind him.

“What the hell was all that!?” a voice demands of him, and it takes a moment to realise its Ranger Lambert, looking furious and shaken as he rounds on Hermann.

Hermann blinks, and he’s back on the other side of the detention centre. Rangers Pentecost and Lambert looking unsettled and infuriated in equal measure. The other technicians aren’t sure where to look.

The shell-shock of what just happened wears down with the strike of sobering reality. And now he understands, now he knows what was just ripped away from him, from Newton, he is _incandescent_.

“I would ask you the same thing! Why in God’s name was the creature’s influence reinstated?!” He’s barely aware he’s shouting. “He asked, you heard him, he _begged_ for us not to send him back there…!”

“He was dying!” Lambert shouts back. The technicians hunch their shoulders in and make a concerted effort to appear smaller. Jake moves to plant his hand on Nate’s shoulder but the other man shrugs it off violently “No – Jake, don’t give me that bullshit, you were there, you know, he was fucking dying, they both were! And that was not the plan! Not even goddamn close. The mission was to allow Geiszler to exist independently of the Precursors, not to endorse his own personal suicide attempt! Your experiment was a failure, Gottlieb!”

“We successfully separated Newton from the Precursors!” Hermann bellows in reply. He can still feel a weight in his palm, knows there will be spots of blood on his sleeves when he looks down. “How is that a failure…?!”

“You know as well as I do that the council wants the Precursor alive. It can’t survive if Dr Geiszler is fucking dead.”

His head is full of rocks and he feels like drowning, but oh right now he’d happily drag the rest of them down with him.

“Are you telling me that you are putting the survival of the Precursor over the sanity and _torture_ of a man…”

“Of course I am!” Lambert snarls, and Hermann goes quiet instantly. Stills, predatory in his silence. Lambert hisses out a harsh sigh, but continues. “Yes I am. It is not ideal, and it is not fair, but we need that information Gottlieb and we can’t do it with both of them dead. So for now, there is nothing we can do! Do you understand me?!”

_Let this end, Hermann, oh god, please…_

Hermann contemplates using his cane to smash Lambert’s skull in. The vision is terrifying, visceral, and it doesn’t feel like his own. It leaves him sick.

He has to leave before he does something rash.

“Perfectly,” he grinds out through clenched teeth, before marching out.

 

* * *

 

 

 _Kill me_ , the Newt in his dreams begs him. _Let me die, I can’t do this anymore._

His realisation comes quietly, stealing in with the shift into morning after many long and barren weeks. He blinks at the paper read-outs shivering in his hands, the holo-light projects that display the same in front of him, over and over and over. Two images, sat side by side, the left brain right brain analysis of a neurological drift impact. Both black and white, graduating into the grey of an x-ray. The first image pock-marked with a dark, rippled stain like someone’s put a cigarette to the image and burned through callous holes, butchering any unity found there. The second is awash with black, burnt out, barely a patch not overcome.

He checks, and then checks, and then checks again to make sure. He can barely press the buttons to type, his hands are shaking so badly. He manages to pull off his glasses so they clink and dangle around his neck, and stares for a long time. He counts his failures like rosary beads.

He feels the stones in his head, like he’s being held underwater with the sheer weight of living.

Hermann holds his hands over his mouth, and he sobs.

After a long time, he sits down, bandy legged and almost missing the chair. He sniffs and rubs harshly at his eyes to wipe away tears, tugs on his lapels as though trying to drag himself back together. He touches his hand to his pocket where he feels that worn scrap of paper folded over. He breathes out slowly, in and out. Then finally he stands.

For the first time in a long time, he laboriously organises his desk into something neat. He takes the first image and carefully prints his own name at the bottom. The second, he writes Newton’s. He sets them out with a note to Jake Pentecost on the front. They’re meant to have another meeting in five hours, but Hermann won’t be going. This will tell him everything he needs to know.

He looks at the clock in the corner, counting down. He has no intention of telling anyone anything, at least not yet. Not before he’s had the chance to try and salvage this into something that isn’t a tragedy.

It’s a question of loyalty. And Hermann has known for a long time whose side he’s on.


	3. Chapter 3

The clock runs down, and it’s early when he’s finished preparing everything. There are people still up and awake, different shifts intersecting, segueing and cutting into each other, but it’s hours before the morning shift. The graveyard staff maintain a skeleton crew, and Hermann only passes two people on his way to the detention area; a Ranger plodding back from the gym facilities, sweating through her shirt and clearly running off something, and a member of the cleaning staff, shuffling down to the storerooms, coffee cup clasped in hand. Hermann’s a familiar enough sight at this hour, so no-one pays him any mind.

There’s a single guard on shift monitoring the detention centre.  Jieun usually takes the afternoon shift, must have swapped with someone else on the rota, and it shows. She’s half slumped onto her folded arms, and she hastily sits up and rakes the hair back from her face when the door swings open, smiling awkwardly when she sees who it is. She blinks heavily, clamps down on a yawn with difficulty, smothering it with the back of her hand and Hermann pretends not to see it.

“The Marshall is asking after you,” he lies smoothly. “Early I know, but I said I might as well report it personally as I've some readings I’d like to check over.” He lifts the machinery he’s carrying in his hands to make a show of it.

It is anticlimactically easy. Jieun thanks him with another stunted yawn, stands and straightens the crinkles from her uniform, and then he’s left alone.

He has about fifteen minutes before someone realises something is wrong. Time enough.

It takes barely any time at all to access the settings to the locking mechanism, and tweak them slightly. He doesn’t want to be disturbed prematurely.

The lights in the cell are dim, but they buzz and brighten lazily on his entry. Hermann pushes the door closed with his shoulder, listening for the hiss and clunk of the lock engaging. Setting his shoulders, he limps in, knocked off balance by the weight of the gear he’s carrying before he sets it down off to one side.

It’s awake, although it is pretending not to be.  Hermann knows it sleeps, perhaps because its body needs to, but it doesn’t seem to require it like its host would do.

 “What are you doing here, Hermann?” it asks, cracking an eye open, squinting at the rising light.  It sounds sleepy, but it’s an affectation, a parody of humanity.

The creature’s head cocks.

“You’re not meant to be here,” the creature croons slowly, and it smiles, pleased. “Someone’s breaking the rules. That’s not like you. What are you doing? Have you come to try and talk to him again?”

Hermann grits his teeth, and  ignores the thing in the chair, gaze following his every movement. Instead, he bends painfully to open the case he’s carried in with him, balancing his cane against the side of it to free his hands, tugging out the clumps of excess wire and strung-together cables which he connects to various bare outlets dug into the bottom edging of the wall panelling.

“Won’t you look at him, Hermann?” A wounded intake of breath. “Come on, man, don’t ignore me. It’s still me, yeah buddy? You believe me, right?”

The mimicry is uncanny, and Hermann inhales sharply before catching himself.

The thing notices, laughs harshly, cruelly.

It stops laughing when it sees the PONS Hermann’s holding in his hands.

It snarls and struggles and bucks as much as it’s able as Hermann tries to clamp the headset down, shaking its head like a dog shedding water. It nearly bites him when he reaches to buckle the chinstrap, and by the time he’s finished, he’s feverish with sweat. It yowls and spits obscenities, says hateful words, makes vile promises. They’ve seen inside him through Newt, so it knows precisely what to say, what will hurt, what will twist and linger.

It only stops shouting when Hermann steps back, ducks down  and from the box grabs his own PONS headset.

“What’s this? Are you joining in this time? Or maybe you think you can stop us in the drift?” it laughs with a hollow sound. It tilts its head as though it is curious, wets its lips with a flicker of tongue.  “Oh, you puny excuse for a man, I will _consume you.”_

Hermann keeps checking his watch, counting down the time in his head. It watches him fasten the set, and its smile grows toothy, greedy.

“You won’t find him in here,” the creature says. “We’ve taken him and swallowed him up, chewed him down. There’s nothing left of him but the bits caught in our teeth. But _you._ We could use you. The sad little scientist who wants to know how the numbers work. ”

It’s not fighting him now, just waiting patiently for him to make his move. Looking at Hermann with its eyes too bright, and Hermann knows what it’s thinking. It’s the reason he locked the door behind him.

He clicks buttons and makes changes with a dead-weight in his heart. He stands in front of the chair, and he thinks about tugging on his jumper, pushing his hair further away from his face, deciding instead to steady his legs, straighten his posture. On the gadget he’s clenching in both hands, there are two makeshift buttons. The effect will be immediate.

Hermann looks straight ahead at the thing that used to be Newton Geiszler.

“I know you might not be able to hear me Newton,” he says quietly. Breathing in, out. Checking the time on his wristwatch, counting down. “But don’t be scared.”

He doesn’t know who he’s saying that for.

He prays fervently, desperately, to a god he’s never quite stopped believing in, and pushes down both buttons.

Pandemonium.

It is nothing like last time. There was a sharing, a union, a meeting of minds there, memories overlapping each other like tidies. This hurts, it’s agony, it’s like paper being ripped to shreds and he feels himself getting smaller and smaller, torn and scourged and drowning, and the weight of the Precursors nearly overwhelms him. He’s shot through with image after image of the Anteverse, their plans, their schemes, their hunger, and he can’t catch any of Newt’s memories at all. There is an insectoid screeching, a bellowing roar, another wash that ripples through the connection and tears through him, _confusion – anger – rage –_ he’s struggling through blindly, finally focusing on a snapshot of a memory, bringing it to mind with force of will, pushing through the _agony – rage – how dare it do this to us – it tricked us, it tricked us…_

Tumbling down, he chases the rabbit.

And suddenly there is a lull, and he’s back in an empty corridor on that night after the end of the world. Streamers limp and scrunched on the floor, a balloon already pruning as it clutches up against the ceiling. He’s drunk and exhausted and there’s sweat crushed in his hair and the feeling of a fuse blown behind his eyes, and a lifetime of possibilities stretching out before him.

The beat of the music has given away to a screeching, shrieking cry, like something sharp splitting through metal. Raging, furious. It sounds far off, and its distance lends a bubbling effect to the hallway, like it’s cut off,  the only place left standing. The lights flicker. Dimming, casting the hallway into half-darkness.

 And then he turns and sees Newton, slumped against the wall, grinning stupidly.

He’s wearing those thick black glasses, his tie knot-eyed as it hangs around his neck, and even with the dirt and drink and sweat from the dancing he looks so bright and young, the last ten years washed away in the mellow shimmer of the drift.

“Hermann!” Newton shouts joyfully, beaming. The drink in his hand going wide, spilling onto the floor.

And then his smile starts to fragment, and he looks at Hermann with confusion, dropping the drink thoughtlessly. He takes in the hallway and the lights, confusion rucking up the lines on his face, and then there’s fear bleeding in there, spider-webbed out behind the red-ring of his pupils.

“Hermann...?” he repeats faintly, voice cracking.  He stares at his friend like he’s not sure if he’s a stranger. And then he realises. “Oh god, _Hermann._ ”

Hermann takes the steps he needs to get to him heavily, ten years of regret rattling around in his head,  his cane clattering to one side as he topples painfully to his knees, dragging Newton to him  with tight hands and enfolding him into his arms. And Newt’s arms are grasping in their turn, clinging painfully,  the stubs of his chewed nails scrabbling against Hermann’s back, and one or both of them are crying. Newt’s folded into him, saying something that’s garbled and mushed up and too stuffed with grief to be legible. Hermann knows they don’t have the luxury of time, the lights flickering again and that thrashing screeching rage echoing closer, but he’s babbling himself,  repeating Newton’s name like a mantra and rocking the other man in his arms, _thank god, thank god, Newt, it’s ok, I’m here, I’ve got you, I’m here…_

It is Newt who finds the strength to separate them first. Pushing Hermann back and staring, looking him over with that shell-shocked expression still struck across his face. Hermann can’t be sure, but he knows he must look as he did on that night, younger and drunker and happier.

“This isn’t…. Hermann, we’re in the drift…. What are we…?”

“We’re chasing the rabbit,” Hermann confirms quietly, and Newt stares at him in horror, his hands grabbing at Hermann’s arms, his hands, bunching his fingers in  his jumper, trying to pull him closer at the same time as pushing him away.

“What… you…oh god… what have you done, what have you _done…_ Jesus, Hermann, I am so so sorry…”

His body is beginning to shiver with anguish, a sob hitching up his throat, and Hermann doesn’t think as he moves into his space again, putting his hands on Newt’s face, urging him to focus. He can’t stop staring, seeing him so clearly as he was, without the corruption of that parasite, daft glasses and obnoxious tattoos and all.

“What I had to do,” Hermann says, and he makes Newt meet his eyes, feeling the flush on his cheeks beneath his palms.  “That’s what the Jaeger pilots do, isn’t it? Share the neural load.”

“But that means they’ll get you too, you… god, you _idiot_ ,” Newt moans, squeezing his eyes shut. “You’re in the drift now. It’s not safe, they’ll find you and they’ll… and I can’t…” He groans sharply, and he blinks rapidly, fisting his hands white, swaying slightly against Hermann like his strings have been snapped. “My _head._ ”

“You need to listen to me very carefully, Newton,” Hermann murmurs. The lights flicker again, feebly. A roar that shakes their bubble of space. “That pain you feel, in your head, behind your eyes? That’s the severing of your connection with that accursed brain, do you understand? And it hurts, I _know_ and I’m sorry, but it won’t be for long.”

“It’s destroyed…?”

“The moment I entered the drift.  I planted some small charges around the tank and programmed them to detonate upon initiating the sequence. Just enough to break the glass, you understand, but it can’t survive outside its environment for long.”

“But it… they’re in _here,_ you must know that! They have a foothold here, and it’ll know what you did, it’ll come after you and I can’t… it’s not _safe…!._ ”

Newt’s voice is getting higher and thinner, panicked and squeaky. His eyes darting as he struggles to comprehend what’s happening, the calamity unfolding before him.  His movements are still slightly delayed and uncoordinated, like he’s remembering how his own body moves.

“I know.” Hermann replies. “And whatever mental influence survives will be heading this way now. But it won’t recognise this memory, I made certain. It’s from after we drifted, and while it might know your brain inside out, its grasp on mine is far more nebulous. It will take a while yet.” Hermann looks down at bitten-down, blood-caked nails, and gently presses his palms against Newt’s, rubs a rough patch of skin with his thumbs. “It’s hurt Newt, and it’s disorientated, and that gives us just enough time.”

Lights flicker, a distant screech. Newt is so close he eclipses Hermann’s entire view, but he’s somehow not close enough.

“To what?”

“To say goodbye.”

“I don’t…Hermann, it’s _in my head_ and I can’t…. I can’t _stop_ it…” Newt’s tugged his hands away to gesture violently, trying to pull together his scattering thoughts. “God, you idiot,  if you try to leave the drift, it’ll grab onto you and you’ll take it, it’ll leave this sinking ship buddy and be done with me….”

Newt’s mania suddenly deflates like a burst lung and he looks like he’s taken on every second of those ten years. His whole body stills. “But you know this already, don’t you?”

Hermann nods minutely and watches Newt collect the pieces of this terrible puzzle together.

 “Alice is dying, so that takes care of severing the link to the Precursors. But there’s an echo, right, enough of a neural imprint to maintain a hold on me until they re-establish a connection. And my brain --,” Newt’s running his fingers through his hair, pulling at strands, ruffling  at the back aggressively, staring out at some horrific point past Hermann’s shoulder. “– my brain’s mush, dude, kay, it won’t survive in here, and I won’t survive without it, so it will come and find, it’ll find _you_ because well sure, you’re the stronger host and now you’re in the drift you’re exposed to it…. But you _know_ this….” He meets Hermann’s eyes finally, and he’s barely breathing. “You knew this coming in, so you must have a plan, some way to outsmart it, unless….”

He closes his eyes and there’s tears building there.

“Unless this is a one-way trip.” He whispers. “Unless you knew this would happen and came anyway. Tell me I’m wrong Hermann. Hermann, tell me.”

Hermann reaches down, squeezes their hands together. Newt is warm, his hands dry and calloused.

“Your body is shutting down,” he says. “The influence of the Precursors is so deep-rooted that without them, you can’t survive. And you know that the safety features of the PONS mean that once your neural link disconnects, I’ll be ejected from the system. The Kaiju know this because we know this. And… we both drifted with them Newt. My brain is not as affected, but it _was_ affected. I took… I took scan after scan after scan and every one paid testimony to the damage they’ve done.  The things they stole, the things they twisted, the things that I can't make right. Should the Precursors ever regain their foothold, I am as susceptible to their influence as you.  I will always be a risk. Even now, I cannot verify whether their influence lies dormant in my own mind, and I confess I would rather not know. And you are perfectly correct.    As soon as I leave, they would latch on to me, and this whole sorry cycle will continue…”

“But what have you done?” Newt stresses. His face white, his lips shaking with the effort of not crying. Hermann suspects he knows already in his own way.

“When your brain…. When your neural link disconnects…” Hermann can’t bring himself to say _when you die._ He’s not strong enough. “I’ve rigged the machine to force a neural overload through the connection, simulated to bear a similarity to synchronising with a Jaeger. The burden will be too much for one mind, of course. But with Alice gone, the Precursor’s influence, its malignance, will be trapped here in the drift, and when – when my brain dies – it’ll burn out with me.”

Newton looks like someone tore out his heart. A ripped-up open expression on his face like he doesn’t know whether to scream or cry.

“Why would you do this?” he stammers, almost demanding in his intensity.  “Why would you do this for me Hermann, it doesn’t make any sense…”

“I will do this _with_ you, you damnable fool.” Hermann says fiercely. “I have failed you in such an unforgivable manner for ten years, and I will not fail you now, here at the end of it all.”

“Fail me?” Newton says faintly. “Hermann, buddy, you…god, you’re such a fucking idiot.”

And then Hermann has his hands full, a brutal and unforgiving hug pulling him tightly, and they’re both saying fragments of things that they’re running out of time to vocalise, _I’m sorry_ and _it’s not your fault_ and _I forgive you everything_.

The roaring is so close now. It’s time to go.

 “Newt,” Hermann says, “That’s them. We have to keep moving through the drift, one step ahead.”

Newt looks up at him with bleary eyes and nods. They stand up together, each supporting the other.

Hermann closes his hands against Newt’s like it’s the most natural thing in the world and focuses on another memory. The roaring fades into the background of a booming downpour, the corridor replaced by a dark evening illuminated only by streetlamps which throw out dirty circles of light, highlighting the slick paving, sodden grass, the smudge of the buildings beyond.

Hermann’s holding an umbrella over his head, and he pulls Newt in closer next to him so they’re both tucked in out of the rain.

“ _Willkommen in Berlin_ ,” he says loudly over the thunder of the rain, the spray and hiss of the fountain nearby. “ _Ernst Reuter Platz._ I went to university here before they gave me tenure.”

“Not the best weather is it?” Newt shouts over the rain. He’s clutching on to Herman, and they walk slowly over to the scant shelter offered by an overhanging tree, Newt’s steps wobbly, Hermann’s cane – a modest black affair, sleek and pragmatic, from when he was younger and concerned himself more with appearances – steadying them both.

“It’s June. _Es regnet immer.”_

They watch the downpour silently for a while. The roar and screech drowned out.

“I was going to bring you here,” Hermann says finally. “Once everything was finished at the PPDC, I wanted to show you around, give you a break before you decided where we should settle. You’d scoff at the museums by the Spree, and we’d walk through Grunewald Forest until you got bored and started to complain about the fresh air or the exercise. But there’s a gallery of street murals along _M_ _ühlenstrasse_ , and you would have loved those. They have all those garish representations of the Kaiju you adore so much, and I imagine you would have compared them to your ghastly tattoos and enthused about whatever monstrosity you wanted to adorn yourself with next, and I would have pretended to hate every idea.”

“I would have really liked that,” Newt says quietly, squeezing Hermann’s hand. He doesn’t speak for a long time.

“I should have been stronger,” he says finally, almost too softly to hear over the rain. “All those people I hurt, all those lives I’ve destroyed, and all because…”

“Don’t be an idiot Newton, I know it’s difficult,” Hermann says in an off-hand approximation of his old self and it has the desired effect of making Newt snort a small wet laugh. “Don’t you dare blame yourself. Not one iota of that was your fault.”

“But I knew something was wrong,” Newt pushes. “At the beginning, there were the nightmares, and then there were the voices Hermann. Whispering, and insidious, and saying such… such horrible things. And I knew they were wrong, but I just kept listening.”

Hermann stays quiet. He knows Newton needs to say these things out loud.

“And drifting was… it was like an addiction, for a while. I wanted it, or maybe they made me want it, but it all amounted to the same in the end. It made me feel…feel important, and special and wanted, and I felt so ashamed for needing that. And I didn’t realise… that it was making me lie and manipulate and cheat… that we went into that drift and we came back _wrong…_ and then it was too late. They twisted everything….and I _tried,_ I really did, I tried so hard, but it _hurt…_ they _hurt me_ Hermann and I couldn’t….”

Hermann looks down at the shorter man, and he looks so young, with his scratched and rain-splashed glasses.

“I wasn’t strong enough,” he finishes, trailing off into an ashamed silence, and Hermann listens out at the rain and the screeching moving closer in the shadows of the trees and the fountains and knows he’s wrong.

“You’re the strongest man I’ve ever had the honour of knowing, Newton,” he says firmly. “It’s one of the reasons I fell in love with you.”

Newt’s hand is steady in his for the first time since he entered the drift.

“You tried to tell me,” he says gently. “And I pushed you away, and it wasn’t… it wasn’t because I wasn’t interested, because trust me dude, I am hella interested. But if I didn’t push you away, it would have… either you would have found out and it would have made me hurt you, or it would have used to get what it wanted, and I didn’t…. Hermann, God I wish I had said….”

“I know,” Hermann says. And Newt’s pulling him now, and they’re side-stepping, out of one memory and into another, one of Newton’s.

The music is thumping, a loud obnoxious party and Newt looks about twenty-three and there’s glowsticks around his neck, some retro band t-shirt showing off un-adorned arms. His hair is spiked up with gel and he’s glowing in the disco lights, standing with his hands in his pockets like he’s trying to take up more space than he does. Hermann wants to shout to Newt that it’s dangerous here, that they’ll be able to find them faster in Newt’s memories, that they can’t stay, but Newt’s moving,  grounding one hand against Hermann’s hips and using the other to cup the back of his neck, and then they’re kissing, tentatively, softly, like they should have done ten years ago.

And then the memory slides over into another party, the music just as bad, and it’s the party after the close of the Breach, and around them somewhere in the sea of people are the ghosts of old friends, younger and riding the high of being alive.  Newt’s pushing against Hermann, his touch a little more desperate, and Hermann would lose his balance if Newt’s arm hadn’t slid round his back to steady him. Hermann pushes back with a certainty almost like falling, closing his eyes, tasting wine and blood, threading his fingers through Newt’s hair.

And then they break apart, but they lean against each other, foreheads touching, hands wrapped around hips. Newt’s rocking slowly like he’s dancing, and Hermann finds himself following, dancing at the end of it all.

Hermann’s not sure how long they sway artlessly. Newt’s smiling sadly, and he keeps moving in to press another bruising kiss to his lips.  Hermann thinks he feels tears on his own face. He wishes they had more time. He wishes a lot of things.

He folds his fingers in a loose cuff around Newt’s wrist and with a step, they’ve retreated back into that empty corridor. Newt blinks and stumbles, dazed. He pecks another careful kiss to Hermann’s check, runs his hands through his hair.

 “How long do we have?” he asks as he slumps down onto the floor. Hermann helps him.

“Not long,” Hermann admits quietly as he joins him.

“I don’t know why I didn’t say anything,” Newt says after a pause. He’s sounds exhausted, breathing slowly.  “I don’t know what stopped me. I wasn’t the same, after the drift. I think I knew something had changed. But I wish I had said something even so.”

“Neither of us have been quite ourselves for a long time now,” Hermann admits. It’s easy to admit things here. There’s nothing else he wants to keep secret. “Since after the drift, I think.”

“I remember this night,” Newt says. Quieter now. Gesturing at the dying balloon and the crumpled streamers and the cold corridor. “The party, _dude,_ and the buzz and the feeling – man, the feeling we were goddamn rock stars. And we could have done _anything,_ and yeah, I was thinking about all the glory and the fame and all the people I’d love to throw it in their faces… but mostly, all I remember thinking was that I was going to get to do it all with you.”

“Well, of course,” Hermann says primly, and Newt snorts at the affectation. “Who else would you have done it with?”

Newton huffs a laugh and rests his head on Hermann’s shoulder. The screeching wail is far away, muffled, and Hermann had almost forgotten it was there, trying to find its way in. Not long now. He timed it perfectly.

Newton’s hand is warm in his, his breathing steady, and there’s nothing more to be said. Hermann presses a kiss to his hair, pulling him closer in a one-armed hug until there is no space between them.

The clock stops.

And Hermann breathes in time with Newt and thinks about the things they would have done as the lights go out.


End file.
